Overview

Forgotten Beauty is an anthology of Irish love poetry from over fifteen hundred years of Irish writing, presenting the work of famous and lesser known writers. The poems express the loves and longings of Irish poets in language that is at once beautiful, evocative, passionate and deeply meaningful. If there is a continuity in Irish love poetry over the centuries, it lies in the sheer complexity of the writers' approach to the subject: loving and leaving, wooing and wishing, finding love or falling out of love. In the nine sections of the anthology, each arranged chronologically, the poets' engagement with their lovers are charted across all the ups and downs of human relations with wit and compassion. Beginning with Dialogues, in which the individual couples' voices are heard speaking of their passions, the poets wrestle through the pangs of Love Declared and Love Denied. The erotic is found in Eros, while Youth and Age are areas of conflict for lovers. The closeness of belonging is found in Relationships, confirmed and developed in Domestic Love. Troubled Love redraws the battleground of emotional intensity and, finally, Dead Loves mourns lost loved ones. The Irish artists whose paintings accompany the poems are drawn from the seventeenth century to the present. Their work expands on, confirms or contrasts in various ways with the poems, creating dynamic exchanges between poet and painter. Both in their various ways celebrate the human emotions and relish the beauty and truth to be found in the meeting of the visual image with the written word.

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9780717157792

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Writer and artist Brian Lalor headed a team of nine hundred contributors as General Editor of The Encyclopaedia of Ireland (2003), which won the Association of American University Presses award for best reference work in the humanities, and the American Library Association listing as best single volume work of reference. He is the author of books on architecture, travel and autobiography, many of which he has illustrated. Some of his more recent publications include a study of medieval architecture, The Irish Round Tower (1999), a fully illustrated edition of Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1997), and The Laugh of Lost Men, an Irish Journey (1997). In 2004 he won the International Swift Society Award for Juvenalian satire. Ink- Stained Hands (2011) is a pioneering study of Irish twentieth-century printmaking. As a fine-art printmaker, his work has been exhibited internationally, and he lectures on the history of printmaking. In a previous incarnation he worked as a specialist in classical archaeology, and made important contributions to the archaeology of Jerusalem. He lives in West Cork.

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